overdraft fee

i get it, you own my throat. 
you have a little freezer where you keep
a bowl of my blood. feed it to 
the feral cats when the moon
is getting summer in her cheeks.
in a great cage
there are ghosts rattling jars of beetles.
in the vault, everyone is see-through.
i look through a gender until
it becomes a reverse portal. not a way out
but a way deeper into the circus. 
i have learned to breathe only a dime's worth
of air. i have talked to the sweet 
mulberries when they want to gossip
about barter systems & hair. 
on the train my bank clawed 
at my ribs all jungle gym in the rush. 
i was on my way to work not
on the way home. the work like
an axe drug behind a horse. the horse,
trying desperately to walk on two legs.
everything about this country is 
about giving your grief masks 
to keep it at bay. i call this "broke."
i call this "horse." i call this "overdraft."
the rent like a flower without 
a neck. the bees in the bush by
the front door, raising them hum
to meet the train. i consider riding
until the train falls apart. until the 
last stop's last stop fractures & i am alone
among the wheels. why isn't it 
ever enough? the money, no where
to be seen. pilot numbers flying
into a storm. i go to the bay.
pull a heron from my mouth. whisper
to her, "do not save your money." 
she asks, "then what should i do with it?"
i respond, "buy as many grapes as you can." 

dry ice flower

i always wanted to be fragile. 
to keep the ghost in the window
without having to suck the flowers dry. 
we were only children 
with our faces made of salt.
every waterfall terrified me. i couldn't
drive yet but he could. we drove a nail
through an arcade. kissed each other
as if time had a go-cart in its throat.
i have since given up on cream. instead,
i thicken my broth with root.
the flower was briefly a world. a place
where we could have built a house
& had thousands of flies. 
then, a wrist going horrible. the ground.
the fires. a shattering enough to build
a religion. all the pieces, without
their stained glass. you could try 
for years to put that face back together.
still, there would be a fragment
gone to the underworld. one day i will
be a child again & reach it. open the door
to the crawl space where a snake
the size of the whole family has been
living on fruit. hungry & ready,
it descends. drags its belly across the floor.
swallows the flower & turns into a statue.
in the garden, everyone has a memory
of stone. my skin turned red
as a father hand. i had no water left
in my body. i was a blown curtain
& everything that followed. 

hamburger help me 

i used to write about meat when i was
trying to turn into a cloud. everything
sizzled in a hot pan. a parking lot
slice of turkey. all the cheese in the word
visiting for a brief blessing. my mom 
had a cell phone life. i had a bathroom
free of ghosts (mostly). a bowl could
cradle enough cream to last the dark.
sometimes we let our neighbor become a sibling. 
he still smelled wrong. i road my bike 
with a playing card in the spokes. we had
only one wooden spoon. i stirred & stirred.
woke up in the middle of the night
to visit the ground ground beef. how did
it live so red? i would touch the plastic 
swaddling the spirals. when it talked it spoke
in riddles. if a father is hungry is he a father?
i shut the fridge door. waited for the after-school.
a crock pot without a lid running wild 
in the basement. i forget how to eat often.
never relearn the same. the cows carried me
to a shrine. an old limestone kiln. i brought
buttercups & dandelions. every yellow
i knew. my tongue, lizard like & small. 
sometimes even still i will open the skillet
& find hamburger helper. i will know i am
required to eat. the cows say, "don't worry
we all do it." i don't know if they mean eat
or eat one another. the wooden spoon, soft
from so many years of stirring. somehow 
that utensil always finds me. tells me, 
"a bite is enough." enough to what? to grow
old & bright? to remember my first mouth?
i am still uncertain. i am comforted though
that i can learn over & over again. that in the dark
the town appears largely the same as when
i road my bike to the menonite store
through the fields in may. 

i used to live here

i go to the front door & turn time
like a stove dial. back to when i lost
the keys & left the apartment open
for weeks. the bears took advantage.
sat at the too-big kitchen table. 
watched tv & enjoyed extravagant baths. 
i could not figure out how or where
to go. the city had bugs. the mountains
had bugs. i drove my car & tried
to call you. only birds were on the phone.
i am a nostalgia eater. i love to go 
to places i walked at night. the street lights
like flowers on the moon. i bring new lovers
as if we could both get sucked back
to our old selves. become less lonely. lick our fingers
clean of mayonnaise. when i lived
on broadway (no not that broadway) 
once a man came & knocked on my door.
he said, "i used to live here." i took him inside.
i showed him the hole in the ceiling. i showed
him the back porch where the raccoons came
& still asked for him. i believe we are
more like mushrooms than anything else.
leaving spores of ourselves wherever we go.
if watered & spoken to right, i think
a little blind self would emerge in that place.
that was before i had glasses. everyone was
the texture of marmalade. the sun, 
a bright blur. the man did not leave for days.
begged me to tell him it was 2010 again. 
i asked him, "what did you leave there?"
he explained that his dog had run away
the next year. he had chased them for weeks
along the old railroad tracks. he whispered,
"they became gods." i believe him. i think
he just needed to confess. he left then. 
i do not confess as much as i should. we pass
my old front door. inside are thousands of us.
you calling me in the middle of the night.
me, letting it ring. all the windows turned to birds. 

chocolate fountain 

i really thought by now i would have
encountered more chocolate fountains.
in fourth grade, they consumed me.
tower of sweet tumble. my fingers,
like rockets. everything was a mouthful.
the sun, more blue. the sky, more purple.
i don't know if i'm imagining it but
when i was in elementary school i think 
the world had a grainy texture. the smell
of a photograph in the cafeteria. my hair,
cut short. a boy's haircut. i wore off-brand crocs. 
my retainer was bright blue. 
they wheeled the fountain out for bingo nights.
in the weeks leading up to the occasion
i would dream of what i could submerge. 
swimming in chocolate. strawberries & 
cookies & marshmallows. i told myself,
when i am older i am going to have 
a fountain in my house. i pictured it 
on the kitchen counter like a microwave.
i don't know where the chocolate fountains went. 
i never saw one in middle school. all we had then
was the soda machine on the back steps
that accepted only quarters. a half-flat sprite
in september. in some ways, it was all
downhill from the fountains. sometimes 
i'll think i see one in the early morning.
a little shrine on the kitchen counter.
what i wanted most as a kid was to dip my fingers
into all that falling. of course, i never did. 
when i catch a mirage that is the first thing i do.
reach out. feel the chocolate warm & soft. two fingers out. 
the neon lights of the school. my shadow,
unaccounted for in the shuffle. dawn now,
cream smooth, bleeding through kitchen window. 

banking

i say "show me the money"
& my phone says, "invest now
& escape later." i got to the bank to live
out my dreams as a thief. of course
i do not perform a heist. i do not have
the wings needed or the teeth.
instead, i deposit fingernails 
& glass into my account. the man person
lady at the desk always changes. sometimes
she is a mirror dragon & other times
he is a little girl. has the worms count
quarters. i know there is a dungeon somewhere
with all the gold. one time i leaned in
& i asked, "do they let you touch it?"
the goose said, "no, i have never seen
a dollar." the place is empty. we decide
this is our chance. we go together down the hall
of shut doors. behind each one 
is a different kind of sorrow. house sorrow
& empty sorrow & field sorrow &
leaking roof sorrow. i have known them all.
whoever said "money is the root 
of all evil" missed so much of the sweat.
evil yes but then there is the hunger
for the easy thing that is not easy. me & the goose don't
arrive anywhere. he keeps saying,
"it should be here. it has to be here."
once i found a twenty-dollar bill on 
the sidewalk. i quickly shoved it in my mouth.
it tasted like fingers & rush hour. 
i almost swallowed but i held steady. got home
& laid it out on my kitchen table, still
damp from my spit. when it dried 
i used it to by grapes. glorious black grapes.
man old man at the bank window always
lectures me about gambling. i tell him,
"i am not gambling." he laughs & says,
"or so you think." 

trash picking

on the first day the snow melted
& the grass reached airplanes again
i visited the road trash. asked it 
what it was like to sleep with immunity. 
the snow this year was thicker
than the previous few. the trash
forgot it was trash beneath that blanket. 
considered what it might be like
to sit in a museum as a crown jewel
or be stolen like a glorious painting.
i was a fog land self then too. in the dark
of the failing world i was a pilot
& then a dungeon sweeper. i wept
but not like seeds. i wept like bison 
tumbling from the side of a cliff. 
hoarded every morsel of light for myself.
sucked bones free of their salt. 
i harvest the trash. tell them stories of where
their bodies came from. satin prehistory.
a chip bag opened like a heart. wrappers
for flying sugar. i keep them all in my bag
as i walk down the sweating road.
a little stream forms. trickles down the hill.
all the snow turned to blood. turned
to milk. feeds the fields. feeds the birds.
i pour the trash into the green bin 
at the edge of my yard. there are all kinds
sleep. is the dark always too much
& not enough? 
 

childwind winter 

sometimes i cannot stop it from snowing.
my brother is there the size of a tomato. 
we freeze in the yard. turn into obelisks.
the bell tower forgets the concept of time
& rings onward through the night. 
in my parent's house the walls are thin. 
if the wind runs childlike
through the valley, you feel it on your face
in the living room. on the floor of the kitchen.
have you ever been in a field walking toward
a lighthouse? do not finish the picture book.
do not keep the radio on. the ghosts escape.
everyone dies happy. i associate the color red
with january. my mother's scratchy gloves.
the smell of a stove burning our spare hair. 
when it starts snowing i collect what i can.
i am in the business of evidence. of stopping
the waterfall before it is a waterfall. i take pictures
when there's a polar bear. show them off
to anyone who will listen which is
not many people. instead, there is always 
a firework day to cozy up to. a new species 
to take into our genders. i call my sibling
begging them to look out the window & promise
me it is snowing. we are in the middle of may.
it is not unheard of. where i come from
nothing is as it should be. that is the refrain 
of our generation. the "as it should be" a turned
screw in the mouth of a long gone machine. the snow,
persistent. melting in the dandelion faces. 
my siblings, all of us, the size of grapes. we glisten.
eat the snow with our bare hands
& just as soon as it is here, it is gone. 

quill pen

in the toy box place there were deer.
they pressed their noses to my egg
just before it ruptured. all the shoes 
in a rabbits nest by the door. 
i held my hands up to a juicy sun. tasted
apple ghost & worms. on the bedroom floor
all the birds came. i could not read yet
but i could poem. i begged for ink. 
crows knocked on my windows. i fed them
sunflower seeds & told them television
through my mouth. that was back when
the trees were still in the bodies. tall & swallowing
light in the front yard. i drew them with
the ink from a hole in the wall. my grandfather
died in what would become my bedroom.
he never left, remained curled up like
a shrimp in the closet. gave me notes
about my drawings. "that is a planet."
"that is a daughter." i was not a daughter.
always felt more like a feather on the back
of some wild dream. i found so many places
to gather ink. from the peephole in a zoo room.
from a hole in the yard where the goldfish 
played tag. from a neighbor boy who 
always smelled like cigarettes & wood. 
to store them properly, i always rolled up
my creations like scrolls. wished i had a carrier pigeon
to deliver them to the cows up the street.
i figured they might appreciate the work 
of a ceiling girl. instead, i kept my words.
let them grow extra legs. let them bloom with
their own desires. i loved the splotch a broken
pen tip made. burst of light. thumb
to the berry. then, supernova. 

missing 

in my phone i follow the story of a night-swallowed girl. 
the television is talking to herself. there are
milk cartons in the windows of the car
when we drive from here to the folded sun.
as a kid, we had lawn chairs. plastic. blue. 
a boy in my class told me, "we are water so
if you really wanted to disappear, you could
just lay out & wait to evaporate." i do not know
what prompted his comment. maybe he recognized
my waywardness. the lost creature
in me sees the lost creature in you. i tried becoming
a cloud & it didn't work. i only lasted an hour or so
in the fried egg light. i am surprised i am here
with how much i have tried to go missing. in the videos
the girl leaves little behind. everything seems like
an omen. a plane ticket. a laptop screen. an open window.
her sister collects facts & shares them with 
a hungry internet. a second swallowing. they ask questions.
did she have any friends? did she have dating profiles?
i find myself searching too. i check the mailbox
of the abandoned house up the street. never mind
the government, this is for our lungs. our flesh
in the sweet dark. i drove my car to hillsides. 
took planes to the haunted eyes of statues. i did not want
to be found. does she want to be found? sometimes 
a storm comes & i wonder who it is. if it is maybe
that boy i went to school with. the one who taught me
i could evaporate. when he was in high school
he played guitar. i thought he was beautiful. 
i always wanted to asked if he had tried it too. to dissolve. 
queerness is sometimes only in retrospect. 
boys without boyhood. the goneness of the moon. 
a shakey belief in returns. we are not salmon or are we? 
at a truck stop i ate ice cream with the car radio on. 
barefoot as onion grass. both of us. the missing girl
& me, eat tonight something cold & sweet. 
years later the boy messages me. tells me he's bi. that he
always knew he wanted the pulp of me. i don't remember
if i replied. the girl is still missing. i want her sister to find her. 
i wonder what it will mean if she never does.